


Lost the Sun; Come Undone

by imperiality (orphan_account)



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Gen, Implied/Referenced Suicide, No Plot/Plotless, Other, Prose Poem, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-13
Updated: 2018-07-13
Packaged: 2019-06-09 21:11:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,698
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15276270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/imperiality
Summary: Carrying. And weight. There's much, much to carry and it's heavy. Heavy to carry, heavy to bear. Heavy weight it bears down on him but he's drifted. He's floating. He will surmount.





	Lost the Sun; Come Undone

**Author's Note:**

> The first person to guess the band I'm quoting from gets to request the next fic, I'm deadass serious

Carrying. And weight. There’s much, much to carry and it’s heavy. Heavy to carry, heavy to bear. Heavy weight it bears down on him but he’s drifted. He’s floating. He will surmount.

Keith and all his weight, all the bear, he can hump it across acres and miles and wastes of desert. The sand pulls his feet under, sink his ankles down but he looks above. Looks ahead.

Silent is he with the loads he carries. On every terrain, toward every front he keeps a silent mouth. A watchful eye. Never before did he think he would carry anyones burden but his own, nor did he ever think he’d want to but through it all, he keeps his lips drawn tight. He keeps his ears wide open.

Before, Keith needed only carry the sin of his father. Silent condemnation, gentle masochism, Keith is a glutton for his own punishment.

_“Grin and bear it.”_

_“Suck it up.”_

_“Stow it, cadets.”_

He keeps his hurt locked down and his grief pulled tight. He trusts what he can see with his own two eyes. What he can feel with his own two hands.

He streamlines the weight he can on the back of his shoulders.

Love is a desire, but unfamiliar to him. Elusive. Evasive. Overwhelming. Love more than pain is a double edged sword and Keith is ever thankful that with hurt, he knows what to expect. Love more than pain eludes tangibility to Keith, and the more he contemplates, the more love perplexes him. Frightens him.

Shiro, outside of obligatory love for his father, might be the first person Keith’s ever loved. Keith’s love for Shiro carves him inside out, leaves him raw and scaled and loss after loss, he realizes love is pain.

For Shiro, Keith learns to share his burdens.

The process in itself is slow. Sore and bruising, making Keith feel naked in an exhibitionistic way. Almost. Had not Shiro been so patient in his climb, had Keith not been so curious with his mind, had they not been so careful to tread and to step- Keith would have felt flogged. But Shiro’s tongue was not a whip; Keith’s walls were not of thorns.

Keith realized pain and burden is borne of bone and sinew.For something to grow, something must die. For him to flourish, he must first wither.

Perhaps that’s what’s happening now.

The wither.

He’s weathered.

After Shiro’s burdens and the burden of Shiro Keith adorns Allura’s burdens. The burden of Allura. The sins of her father. One by one and piece by piece, Keith never stops to think of the weight he mantles himself to carry. He never lets it slow him down, but spur him on.

_“Come on, Keith!”_

_“Iron sharpens iron.”_

_“Hurry up and wait.”_

He keeps his steps light. His soul is heavy. He sharpens his blades to compensate the dull of his heart. He keeps his eyes forwards to ignore the descent of his strength.

Allura, as the heart and guiding light of a cause decades and centuries, a cause 10 millennium old. Pidge for her seek to find what was lost. To search for the missing. Hunk; to overcome. Lance; to settle. Coran, and his need and love and loaded silence.

Keith shoulders it all.

Shiro and all of his burdens countless. He doesn’t mean it, he doesn’t _want_ to hurt them; suffering just befalls him. He is a beacon for pain. A regular tortured soul. Shiro, made to be broken, but Keith swears he will see him be made whole.

Voltron, a home. The Blades, a force.With all their burdens and baggage and hurt and hunger scarce to be counted, where does Keith fall in the queue? When does he extrapolate the aggressions against him? How does he strip of the burden draped over him?

Superfluous questions.

He pays them no mind.

Keith finds himself not in the queue at all; he absorbs, deflects. Reworks and reroutes. His blades get ever sharper and his soul gets ever dimmer. He keeps his heart locked tight. He keeps his lips sealed tight.

Keith knows there is no Where. The desert stretches endless before him but he knows step by step, the horizon _must_ be closer. He knows there is no When. He knows better than to count his steps, to track the miles. To mark the days. He knows there is no How.

Keith knows there’s more at stake than… what? His feelings? He can prioritize.

“ _She’s gone too far, she’s lost the sun-“_

_“I’ll find myself some wings-“_

_“Than spend my time growing old with you-“_

Keith just wants to turn it all _off_. Alas, the ceaseless and careless playlist in his mind cycles on. He can’t turn the damn music off, but he tries.

He can’t turn his damn _mind_ off, but he tries.

Keith cannot turn off, so he turns away. Like love and like hope. Keith evades like a thief after dusk. He turns away and he drowns himself. Looks ahead, and numbs in affectivity. He drowns himself in staggering hours of logged training. He diffuses and silences and wills himself to exhaustion, not daring to pray that _just tonight, can tonight I have sleep come easy._

He grows numb to the growing bruises. To his darkening eyes. He’s affecting and starving in lethal ways. His mind, day by day, has its melodies exchanged.

Some days, he wishes to remember the music. Music, as apposed to to the ricocheting noise.

More than anything, he longs for silence.

Lance, and the sound of his woes. He must trust Keith enough to come to him with them, but Keith can only hope he doesn’t burden Lance further.

Allura too, with woes.

Then sometimes Pidge.

Sometimes even Hunk.

The trust, while flattering, is overwhelming. It bowls Keith over and makes the cacophony of noise even more splitting. It’s overwhelming, and frightening.

_I never asked for this!_

Overwhelming and frightening. It must be love.

But love, Keith was not meant to hold. It only further sinks the scale of his burdens.

Burdened and battered and butchered is he; though he is negligent to think of revival when Shiro is so needing of resurrection.

Pidge is need to find.

Hunk is need to rest.

Lance and Allura need less and more, but their fluctuation does Keith no favors.

Keith has no business doing favors for Coran, when all of his favor keeps siphoning to Shiro.

Shiro.

Voltron.

Home.

Blades.

Rest.

Resurrection.

At night, Keith can never exhaust himself enough to escape tossing and turning. His inadequacy is likely the loudest of all.

Like hope and like rest and like peace and like love, sleep is vicious. It snares at him, evading him the cruelest ways of all.

Quickly Keith figures that sleep is for cowards.

Sleep is not for him.

_Sleep would be a way to go._

Sleep would be too easy.

Keith has no choice but to be painfully articulate in his introspection. Outside of still waters and unmoving tides, Keith’s self-reflection is flawlessly clear. He knows one day, he might bend to be broken. He knows that the weight against, over and on him was not meant to be exclusive-

“ _Would it kill you to open up?”_

Not if he does it himself.

_“You can share what’s going on, Keith. In fact, we insist.”_

He only wants to cease and _desist._

_“No man is an island, Keith.” “How many times are you gonna to have to save me?” “Patience yields focus.”_

With hundred-carat clarity, Keith sees the burden he lays over his team and home.

He sees it, but he can’t stop it. 

But he could, he knows.

Sleep from which he would not wake, his at last and eternal- he’s had a plan and faultless.

His cause is bigger than the noose choking him, however. He swallows it down and forces himself to put up with wakefulness. Every waking hour seduces him towards eternal slumber, but he does not resign. He stays chaste to the distant whisper that hope and love will be his to have and hold. That love will no longer be something to fear.

Just because he does not bed though, doesn’t mean he does not flirt.

The chase and the game is easy to do with a livelihood like Keith’s. Over Naxzela, it was so easy.

_I guess I almost whored myself out._

Every mission, every rescue, every day is a direct test against Keith’s temptation.

With a livelihood like Keith’s, pain is not an unfamiliar concept. No, pain is something to which he’s been long been since desensitized. He no longer fears the pain.

The possibilities are what give him pause. The unknown.

If he didn’t know how practically crucial he was to the cause, and if he weren’t aware of all the unknowns of eternity, he would have let his recklessness shadow him long ago.

If Keith didn’t know how precisely he was needed, his lust would surely have been his greatest sin.

He doesn’t want to be needed, though. Not any more. He wants to be wanted.

_You moron, you want a lot of things._

He feels like a moron for wanting anything at all.

He’s always wanted a family, a home to come back to.

 _Doesn’t this come pretty damn close?_ Now of all times, Keith’s mind decides to be silent.

Love he would have liked to see be made manifest. Easy. Painless. (By now, Keith knows better than to want for the impossible.)

Keith just wants

_some goddamn sleep!_

and he wants too much, but it shouldn’t be. It should be enough. Keith wants for everything he is without, Keith wants to hope and to have; Keith wants to be on the damn queue-

but he knows better.

So remains faithful, albeit with wandering eyes. He can look, but he’ll never touch. Instead, Keith keeps his hands over the threads of his noose and his shoulders for the burdens.

Keith keeps his hands to himself.

He keeps his lips locked tight.

“ _Too many churches, and not enough truth-“_

_“Too many people, and not enough eyes to see-“_

_“Too many lives to lead, and not enough time.”_


End file.
